The Titan Epic
by LunaPadma
Summary: Alex Carpenter just wants a better world. A world where the gods are held accountable for their actions, where children aren't abandoned to live with people unfit to parent, where the Titans rule. Is that so wrong?
1. Meeting

On the morning of his tenth birthday, Alex Carpenter makes a friend.

She says her name is Georgia, that she's nine and that she ran away from her school where a teacher did something she didn't explain. Her mother is a goddess, just like his, and she sees the same world he does.

She's cold and wet and she looks like a drowned puppy. And he decides he could stand to have a little more company.

"D'you want to come with me?" he asks.

She nods gratefully and follows him to his safe house.

* * *

It's Georgia's eleventh birthday, and Alex steals a cupcake just for her. He even takes a candle, so she can have a birthday wish.

She wishes that the Olympians and their legacies would be utterly obliterated. He doesn't understand why she hates the gods so much, but he lets her be. He doesn't ask why.

That night, she surprises him by telling him.

"I told you once that a teacher attacked me," she says softly, staring into their tiny campfire. She already sounds close to tears.

"Gia, you don't have to tell me," Alex protests. She still sometimes looks like the drowned puppy he found nearly two years ago, and he finds it alarming.

She shakes her head. "You deserve to know. He wasn't my teacher, he was a substitute. Mr. Pard."

"Monster?" Alex guesses. A few of his teachers had turned out to be monsters before he'd run away.

She laughs hollowly. "Worse. Dionysus. He—he asked me to stay after class. Held me down and…" Here she breaks down. Alex doesn't need her to finish to piece together what happened.

"I was _nine,"_ she sobs.

Alex just holds her for a while. He hates them too, now.

And he'll do his best to make sure that her birthday wish comes true.

* * *

A few months later, they run into an older demigod. He says that his name is Luke and that he hates the gods, too.

They share his fire that night. They exchange war stories of monsters they've killed, exaggerating and bluffing, like friends almost.

At the night's end, Luke invites the two of them to join the service of Kronos and have a chance to rip Olympus apart brick by brick.

Georgia accepts for the both of them.


	2. Training

Luke takes them to Louisiana, where he's set up a training camp for both demigods and monsters. There are even a few mortals with the Sight.

Alex is a natural. His mother is Minerva, and his knowledge of strategy makes him the envy of camp.

Georgia isn't a natural. She can't remember the advantages of a sword or a knife. She is completely focused on revenge, on wronging those who wronged her. She cannot see the big picture.

Alex is climbing through the ranks of the Titan Army like a jungle gym, but Georgia's stuck at the bottom.

* * *

When she's thirteen and he's fourteen, a new boy comes to camp. His name is Gideon Virga, and he is the son of Hecate.

He's about as bad with a sword as Georgia is, and they get partnered up frequently for training exercises.

He's funny the same way she is, and they make each other laugh the way she and Alex never did. They start developing inside jokes, and all she has to do is say "green bean", and they'll both fall to the ground in tears.

Alex tries not to feel jealous, because it's good for her to have more friends. She's too closed-off as it is. She's no longer the drowned puppy he met on his tenth birthday. She has a spine and fire in her eyes and a grudge in her heart. She doesn't need his protection. She's a grown-up now, and they're no longer trying to stay alive together for one more day.

But he can't deny that little spark of happiness when she finds him after a particularly grueling training exercise and slots herself under his arm like old times and whispers "You're still my best friend."


	3. Kidnapping

Two weeks after Alex's sixteenth birthday, he finds out that Gideon Virga is a spy for the other side.

Lord Kronos dispatches Ethan to deal with Gideon, and Alex goes out to find Georgia. That sort of news shouldn't have to come from anyone else.

He finds her, all right. He finds her unconscious as Gideon Virga holds a knife to her throat and demands safe passage from the training camp.

Alex has never wanted to kill anyone so badly, and that includes Dionysus.

"Release the girl, Virga," Ethan demands. Hostage or no, Georgia's still his sister and he still tries to look out for her.

Gideon roars with laughter. "Oh, no, I'm taking her as my collateral. Who knows what you bastards might try to do to me?"

Alex forces himself to stay back. But she looks so tiny and fragile in his arms and he's suddenly reminded of the morning of his tenth birthday when he found a little girl who looked like a drowned puppy.

Gideon Virga drags Georgia to a nearby pegasus and throws her across its back before jumping on himself. As the pegasus takes off, he calls down to Ethan, "Besides, with you and Carpenter pumping her full of dirty little army secrets, she's worth a hell of a lot to Camp Half-Blood."

He disappears into the sky and Alex is stuck on the ground and he can't look out for her down here.

And that's the worst part.

* * *

Alex spends the rest of the week in a daze. He depends on Georgia more than he realizes and he needs to see her, to know that she's okay.

Their spies report that Dionysus is fighting Typhon, far away from the camp. Alex isn't there for her, but at least _he_ isn't either.

There's a war to be fought and he just keeps thinking that he can't do it without her.

It gets to the point where Ethan calls him in to tell him that the best way to get her back is by defeating the Campers.

Alex _knows_ this. His mother is Minerva, after all.

But that doesn't make the directions easier to follow.

* * *

It takes two weeks from the day Georgia is kidnapped for Alex's rescue mission to be approved, and another week to prepare for it.

Not, of course, that Alex called it a rescue mission. It is called, in fact, an Information Gathering Session Behind Enemy Lines. An IGSBEL.

Alex dyes his blonde hair brown and cuts it short. He puts on a Southern accent and starts responding when people call him Ryan. He practices fighting lefty so that people will think he's a self-trained sword fighter.

And then he is ready.


End file.
